Fashion
Colourful fashion had a human cost too: in 1862 a factory girl making artificial flowers for women’s headdresses died from poisoning. She was said to have vomited green slime and had green tinged eyeballs. The killer was the main ingredient of the new green dye – arsenic. The incident was even reported in the USA prompting a review of the use of green in fashion and homeware. Green wallpaper became known as ‘walls of death’.
Scandals such as this and the ever-growing use of colour in popular culture prompted discussions on colour theory and different colours’ moral qualities. The Ashmolean exhibition will show artists who had famously different attitudes. John Ruskin (1819–1900) believed artists should stick to the God-given colours of nature. James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) disagreed entirely and followed a philosophy of ‘colour for colour’s sake’. His extravagant use of colour was made easier by the invention of collapsible metal paint tubes.
Certain ‘unnatural’ colours were embraced by the ‘Decadent’ movement – such as the dyed-green carnation sported by Oscar Wilde. Another Decadent favourite was yellow, epitomised by a series of saucy French novels which had distinctive yellow covers. The young woman, collapsed on a sofa in Ramon Casas (1866-1932) tour de force of green (A Decadent Young Woman, After the Dance, 1899), is shown holding one of these risqué books. Seizing on the sexy connotations, the avant-garde periodical, The Yellow Book appeared in London in 1894. Its bright yellow cover was designed by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98). Uncompromisingly stylish and ready to push boundaries, The Yellow Book came to define the decade as ‘the Yellow Nineties’.
Beautiful
No exhibition on Victorian colour-culture can omit the revolutionary impact of photography and electricity. Some of the first innovators were women. Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean features one of the earliest colour reproduction techniques, cyanotypes, made by Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who used the process to create ethereally beautiful ‘photograms’ (photos made without a camera) of British algae, published in instalments from 1843-53.
The Ashmolean exhibition closes with another pioneer, The Electric Fairy: Loïe Fuller. Once an unknown vaudeville performer from Illinois, Fuller (1862–1928) became an overnight sensation in 1892 when she premiered her modernist ‘Serpentine Dance’ at the famous Folies Bergère in Paris. Colour was central to her performances. Her voluminous costumes were made using dozens of metres of diaphanous white silk, with concealed cane rods to extend the sleeves. Enhancing the spectacle were the jewel-like colours of electric lights projecting onto the swirling silk against an otherwise darkened stage. The exhibition will show a recreation of the performance using a Victorian illusion device, a Pepper’s Ghost.
Mr Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts and Exhibition Curator, Ashmolean Museum, says: ‘This exhibition aims to be a joyous and surprising tour through a period of history that has been misunderstood as bleak or black-and-white. The Victorian colour revolution made a radical impact on the lives of everyday people throughout Europe and beyond; and this is a chance to see some the 19th century’s most colourful and spectacular works of art, fashion and design.’
Exhibition: Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design
Dates: 21 September 2023-18 February 2024
Open: Daily, 10:00-17:00
Venue: John Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3, Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PH
Tickets: £6.00–£17.00, available at the Museum or online
Catalogue: £25.00, available to purchase at the Museum or online
See also: Sidney Mullis and a Coming of Age
